Talk to an archivist. All the digital nightmares are multiplied with the evolving technology, and the potential of losing information because it is not in a platform that is still used.
Perhaps this really is the third revolution, agricultural revolution, industrial revolution and "communications revolution" or whatever historical moniker this era ends up with, if it is indeed that significant. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 12:12 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Texascavers] Re: Electronic media Geary brings up interesting points about libraries going to digital journal subscriptions. I have seen this as a potential problem ever since it first occurred since it directly affected my profession (chemist). There are a few journals that allow an institution to keep access to their past subscribed volumes even if they stop subscribing, but most do not and thus as Geary said, the library ends up with no collection if they ever stop. That seems patently unfair and I'm surprised libraries have agreed to those terms. Another problem is that when the library suffers a power failure or worse, when the journal's server goes down, no one has access to their material. At least with a paper copy you could read it with a flashlight during a power failure. I often made printed copies of articles because I would need to take the paper to the lab in order to follow a procedure, but of course I would do that with print journals as well. Mark Minton Quoting Geary Schindel <[email protected]>: > There appear to be a number of problems with the electronic media > that folks are still wrestling with. > > This is really more an issue for university libraries and such but > many professional journals are going on line and are only available > through a subscription service. If a college or university > subscribed to a journal in print form, it would become part of their > collection and available as a hard copy to anyone that wanted to > view it. However, now that some journals are only available on line > through a subscription, they are only available if you pay for the > service. Some schools spend $100,000 or more to subscribe each year > to the journal services and most won't let you pick and choose > which ones you want - you have to buy their package. And if you > don't renew, you lose access to all the journals, not just the year > you didn't buy. > > In addition, we assume that the electronic media is secure but to be > honest, this technology is fairly new and relatively untested. I > do know that I can't read the disc containing my Thesis because I > wrote it on a TRS 80 using a word star program. The only surviving > copies are paper (not that it was that important a work). However > books have survived for hundreds of years (assuming they are > printed on good paper) and minus a few book burnings. > > The world of research, and library science, is being turned on its > head as we change media type. Search engines are very powerful and > have greatly added in doing research. The flip side is that it > could, in theory, disappear overnight. > > FYI, > > Geary --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
